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Gessler identifies 35 non-citizens who voted, but holds off on rule-making

By Tim HooverThe Denver Post

Posted:
09/07/2012 05:36:43 PM MDT

Updated:
09/07/2012 10:43:44 PM MDT

Secretary of State Scott Gessler uses a press conference from his downtown Denver office on Tuesday to announce a new media campaign that will inform Colorado residents how to make sure that they are registered to vote.
(Kathryn Scott Osler, The Denver Post )

Secretary of State Scott Gessler said Friday his office had found 35 noncitizens who have voted in Colorado elections, but in the face of criticism over how his office has tried to identify them, Gessler said he would not move forward with proposed regulations to deal with suspected noncitizen voters until after the election.

Gessler, a Republican, blamed the federal government for not giving him access to a Department of Homeland Security database quickly enough to check the citizenship status of registered voters.

Critics on the left questioned whether even the finding of 35 people identified as noncitizens was accurate, saying the federal database sometimes is in error.

"We confirmed our current voter registration has vulnerabilities," Gessler said in a statement. "It is unfortunate the federal government dragged its feet for a year, putting us in a difficult position for the coming November election. For now, we will evaluate the effectiveness of the current challenge provisions, while we develop better procedures for the future."

Gessler recently sent out 3,903 letters to suspected noncitizen voters asking them to either prove their citizenship or take themselves off voter rolls. Those on the list were identified because they had used noncitizen documents — such as a green card — to obtain their driver's licenses.

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But the letters went out before Gess-ler's office got access to the federal database, and even when he did get access, only 1,416 of those could be checked because there were not alien registration numbers in the federal database for the remainder.

Of those, 141 came up as noncitizens in the database, and of those, Gessler's office said, 35 came up with a voting history — meaning they had voted at least once in an election in Colorado. Gessler's office released a list showing that eight of those voters were in Denver County, seven in Arapahoe County, two in Jefferson County, two in Adams County and two in Boulder County.

While Gessler's office released the names of the 141 registered voters identified as noncitizens, the list did not specify which among those were the 35 in question.

Elena Nuñez, executive director at Common Cause, a liberal group that has repeatedly crossed swords with Gessler over election issues, said it's still not proven that the 35 people Gessler pointed to are not citizens. She said the federal database contains errors sometimes and that voters still would have to be given the chance to prove they are citizens before county clerks could remove them from rolls.

And in any case, Nuñez said, the number of noncitizens who may have voted is tiny compared with the millions of votes cast in an election.

"The secretary has put a lot of time and resources into going down this path of trying to keep people from voting to address a problem that may or may not exist," she said.

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